Turning and turning in the widening gyre | The falcon cannot hear the falconer | Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold | Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world | The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere | The ceremony of innocence is drowned | The best lack all conviction, while the worst | Are full of passionate intensity. — W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

They are not his words, as it states, and they come from a larger piece. However, of all the information he could have featured so prominently from that article, he chose to select that particular sentence. So I asked him:

@odonnellm NATO media endorses statements such as this: “They are not human. They are animal” !?!? #Afghanistan

@odonnellm Alright, but that does not explain why you would select that particular statement, “they’re animals,” to feature here.

Given O’Donnell’s reply, should we expect to see, from now on, Taliban statements being featured, given that they are also Afghans, defending and speaking for themselves?

Obviously not, but it’s interesting to see the dark depths of demonization into which NATO is plunging its public discourse. Abridging and lifting that statement from an Afghan, overcome by anguish and anger, serves to appropriate and translate it into something which is an antique, entrenched part of Western imperial enculturation: the other as sub-human, or not human at all. In a culture where humans and animals are valued differently, and animals can be slaughtered without apology, O’Donnell marks his target: some Afghans, there in their home in Afghanistan, have a right only to be killed — because if you are not human then how could you be viewed as having human rights, and the right to self-determination?

Yeah, the Taliban are the animals, not like the American embassy staff and diplos in Kabul, in that link Aaron gave you to the NYT. Grope and urinate on each other. Homoerotic hazing. Intimidation and threats. That American embassy sounds like a real live Animal House, talk about the degeneracy of an empire in decline. No shortage of hypocritical morality points though.